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F-Secure's Hypponen: The Internet Is a 'US Colony'
nk497 writes "Web users are vulnerable to mass online spying because the U.S. has too much power online, according to a leading security researcher. Discussing revelations of U.S. spying at his LinuxCon keynote speech, F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen argued that the internet had 'become a U.S. colony,' at the expense of democracy. 'We're back in the age of colonization,' he said. 'We should think about the Americans as our masters.' Hypponen argued that its dominance over the web gave the U.S. too much power over foreign countries, noting that while the majority of European politicians likely use U.S. services every day, most U.S. politicians and business leaders don't, for example, use Swedish-based cloud services. 'It's an imbalanced situation,' he said. 'All the major services are based in the U.S.'"
People act like the US is the only country to have ever spied, when really, in this case, they just got caught. How do you know that others wouldn't be doing the same sort of monitoring? How do you know that they're not already?
We built the original infrastructure. The original backbone was developed here, and nearly all the funding came from US sources. Everyuthing else is an extension of that, and built on that framework.
Don't like it? Build your own, like China or Iran, and see how well corporations and people flock to use your "Internet".
Israel has been colonizing the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights since 1967l. Turkey has been colonizing Cyprus since 1974, probably encouraged by the example set by Israel. China has been colonizing Tibet since the 50's.
There are probably other examples but these are three of the most notable that continue today.
Where are the non-US-based search engines, social media sites, video hosts, and email providers? Yes they exist, of course, but there are almost no notable standouts. For every Vimeo there's a dozen US-based YouTubes.
You only have yourself to blame for complacently letting US businesses dominate these fields. The internet is based on open protocols and open networks. The playing field is level other than the minor niggle of ICANN's control of domain names and DNS root servers (minor since the internet works without DNS and could be replaced with something else). Hell, most countries have an advantage over the US considering our antediluvian telecom infrastructure.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I'd argue that "Colony" is sort of an unfair term: a "Colony" is something that I set up by getting some of my jackbooted thugs together, sailing to your country, and telling you that this is how it's going to be from now on, while drinking gin-and-tonics and exporting your resources to the home country.
On ye olde intertubes, it's sort of hard to 'colonize' somebody (especially since, unlike land, which hasn't been available in the "actually not populated by somebody you'll need to shove if you want to 'discover' it" flavor in centuries to millenia, the internet exists because it is built, and you can build more if you want more), except on the very limited scale of cracking their server and stashing stuff on it.
It seems that it might be fairer to say that the internet is more of an American shopping mall. It is true that, to a surprising degree (especially surprising in areas that have never liked us much, or for which we never bothered to do much localization), that lots of foreign traffic crosses into American-held internet infrastructure to work, play, and do business; but (unlike a 'colony') that isn't because that infrastructure used to belong to somebody else until we grabbed it, and the locals are still stuck there; but because once it was built, people came.
Anybody who doesn't fancy being watched by Uncle Sam, or a EULA-serf of a major American multinational(including US residents) should definitely give some strong consideration to how much of their activity is currently firmly within the grasp of the US government and a few cooperative (except on taxes) corporations; but if they want to get anywhere, the line of thought is going to have to be closer to "So, why does everybody go through $AMERICAN_COMPANY$ anyway, and why isn't there a homegrown equivalent elsewhere?" rather than following the misleading road of some sort of post-colonial process. There simply was no such colonization, so expecting to decolonize is going to fall into exciting category error fun time.
That is absolutely right. They are not bitching about spying. They are bitching about America has too much power to do spying and them (Finnish people ??) NOT! If the balance was tilted towards their side, do you think they would complain this much ? I think not...
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians or god forbid Mujaheddin army from the garden variety of middle eastern kingdoms/banana republics. I am not a born American by the way, if you are going to try flaming me with phrases starting with "You, Americans always say it like that....blah-blah". It is common sense. Regardless how bad the freedoms are in this country, I'd rather not be anywhere else at this moment in time.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
The solution is to bring our own US government back in line with the Constitution, and recognize the spurious nature of arguments about mass and warrantless surveillance.
Making chunks amenable to foreign countries, with less protections (see arguments about Europe spying being literally 100x more intrusive) is just an insensate knee-jerk reaction: it is useful in practice only to bring pressure to bear against the US government to be more open and restricted.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Crown funded most of the transport, infrastructure and civil service of the American Colonies ....
You Ingrates should have shown more respect to your Sovereign (and the Crown's treasury) and should
not have started that rable-rousing "revolution".
Quiz: The above statements are:
- Ironic
- Bloody right
- Probably made by a no-good, towel-headed communist liberal hippie hommo
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians or god forbid Mujaheddin army from the garden variety of middle eastern kingdoms/banana republics.
You would really rather be spied on by a country that has the capability to summarily execute you anywhere on the planet via drone strike, than a bunch of radicalized extremists living in tents, who couldn't get close enough to harm you, even if they really really wanted to?
Pardon me for finding that an odd position to hold.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I think it also helps that English is the most commonly spoken second language in a good many countries. So if someone can't find a particular resource in their native language online, they're more likely to turn to an English based equivalent than they are, say, a Japanese or Danish based one.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Saying this as a European, the European one would eradicate all anonymity in the name of getting rid of every last trace of "hate speech", "antifeminism" etc.
They are, it's just that individual states of Europe has a intelligence budget so low, they couldn't even spy on their own citizens let alone foreigners abroad.
Why should I, as a citizen of Europe, have less rights online than US citizens? Especially when we are talking about companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.) that operates within EU, whom are also forced by US law to give away stuff to US government.
Europe should create laws where service providers (working directly or indirectly in Europe) can't give the user's data to third parties without (very least) informing the user in question. Purpose of these laws should be aimed at conflicting with US's FISA request-law which prevents me from knowing if my data is given away or not.
While some level of monitoring goes on in every Western country, most national intelligence bodies don't have the resources to tap at the same level as the NSA. Just look at the budget of the NSA compared to that of Finland or Poland's intelligence ministries. The NSA can tap fiber even outside the US, but even wealthier and more powerful European governments don't enjoy that same luxury.
True, but no other country on earth likes to boast about FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!!! as much as the US.
I don't think most people believe the US is the only country that does this, just the one with the most cognitive dissonance.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I think the assumption is that if those governments had as much power, then the damage they could inflict would be proportional. If the US couldn't do anything with the knowledge, then no one would care.
That's quite a reasonable comment, actually. (Somebody mod the AC up?)
Most consumer-level internet resources are in the US because the datacenters are. The datacenters are mostly in the US because it's still a nice place to start a company, and most of the companies have their HQ here. I'm not sure whether the key is where the corporate HQ is located, or where the datacenter is located, but I'm thinking either makes you vulnerable. Many countries' governments are seeing a problem with this.
That being the case, it presents a real risk for fragmentation of the internet. Countries won't want their people all going to a foreign company and datacenter just to escape spying (better to be spied on by a foreign power that doesn't share with your government), and breaking the internet along government boundaries would be tragic.
Maybe a better answer is to just fix the US. What if we just defunded the NSA, fired everyone, scrapped all the datacenters, demolished the buildings, and salted the earth? OK, we'd be at somewhat higher risk of terrorism because of the loss of SIGINT, and we wouldn't want to lose that forever, plus we'd need SIGINT again before some major power goes to war again (sure to happen inevitably), but I think the cost might be worth the value of the object lesson about government overreach.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You would really rather be spied on by a country that has the capability to summarily execute you anywhere on the planet via drone strike, than a bunch of radicalized extremists living in tents, who couldn't get close enough to harm you, even if they really really wanted to?
I find it rather amusing that you consider England, Russia, and China to be a bunch of "radicalized extremists living in tents".
What this article is bitching about is essentially "Everybody goes to the US to setup companies, data centers, hire tech people, and that's not fair". Bullshit, there's nothing the US does to force people to setup their stuff in the US. There's nothing the US does to penalize anybody in other places.
There are a wide variety of reasons why the internet is "US-centric" for most services, but US having some kind of vague, undefined Authoritarian Control is not one of them.
A lot of people avoid the EU because of Net filters and (in their mind) excessive privacy regulations. People avoid China and Russia because they have little or no confidence those governments are not going to simply take their assets. And more to the point in the case of Russia and China, most people assume they'll have all their data and intellectual property straight ripped off... of course no mention of that recently because right now the NSA is the bogeyman people are hiding from.
If you don't want the internet to be US-centric then it's easy to solve it- make your own country a more appealing place to setup shop. The US offers relative stability in terms of economy, infrastructure, and laws, and if you look at the planet and where communications lines run it's "centralized". You could try setting up in a country in the Middle East, but political instability, poor infrastructure, and lack of a wealth of advanced educational services make it a pretty piss-poor region to consider right now. So if you're going to try and offer Internationally available services the US is currently the logical place to be.
And what are you going to gain by moving elsewhere? Technically the NSA's job IS to spy on other nations, the controversy is that they got caught doing it to US citizens. You still have to worry about the NSA everywhere else, in addition to the local governments. Sure, setup shop in Saudi Arabia, that sounds great until the local Dictator decides you're violating some religious requirement and shuts you down. China? Get ready to see your products show up on the black market with a minimally altered logo affixed. South America somewhere? Nope, there's crap for infrastructure and political stability is a major issue. Asia? Sure, some countries are appealing, but again you're looking at connections to the rest of the world having to go either through the US, or politically unstable regions.
Pardon me for finding that an odd position to hold.
Hold whatever position you desire, but please at least try to base it in some type of semblance of reality.
A false sense of WHAT? I cherry picked WHAT??? I'm sitting here in CALIFOIRNIA just sort of shooting off repsonses to idiots, I'm not writing a peer-reviewed article, just an opinion, AS AN AMERICAN, understanding however that the US GOV is OFF ITS ROCKER as a democratic institution, and I'm a european shill now? So much for land of the free... OUR government is out of control. Scrape the shit out of your eyes, brother. This govnernment set out a plate of delicacies called the "Internet", implicitlly said "I will govern this gift with a benevolant hand", and then whosale helped itself to whatever secrets it wanted. That's morally wrong, I don't care what you say. This government is under the illusion that it knows what's right. The last 10 years show it really isn't. To believe otherwise is to be blind, or complicate.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Would we really be at any higher a risk from terrorism? Personally I feel the antics carried out by the US Government (read my country) are all done under the guise of a war on terror. This war will never win and a whole new generation are being indoctrinated into not questioning the government because they are hunting terrorists to keep you safe.
If I had my way all those shitheads in Washington would be tossed on their fucking ears, and all their assets would be put into the US treasury. Too many politicians these days are in the hip pocket of corporate America.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The Crown funded most of the transport, infrastructure and civil service of the American Colonies...
No, the colonies did becuase George III, a porphyric idiot, started upping the taxes to pay for England's little imperialistic chessmatch with France. The Crown bestowed no gifts. Or was the Boston Tea Party a little fraternity roughhousing?
No, just bunch of traitors and terrorists.
They are not bitching about spying. They are bitching about America has too much power to do spying.
Personally what I finding hard to deal with is the amazing level of hypocrisy. The US tries to project a picture that it is a beacon of democracy, high moral values and an all round "good-guy"...and then spends its time going around behind all its friends and allies backs spying on them. It is probably correct to assume that other countries do this too and there may even be good arguments for it in some cases (although I have trouble understanding the motivation for bugging European leaders' phones) but nobody else tries to claim that their country is some amazing paragon of virtue that everyone else should follow.
So while I might agree that if I'm going to be spied on I'd rather it be by the US than by others the rest of the world would really appreciate it if you could lay off the hypocritical good-guy act. The US may come off looking very good compared to some of the more troubled nations on this planet but compared to some of the better ones they are beginning to look rather dodgy.
One of the claimed benefits of a Constitutionally limited government was that each State had the power to experiment, and try different paths. This was supposed to allow States to govern based on the local desires, rather than force everyone to agree on everything on a Federal level. Sadly, Federal scope creep has made States mere administrative units.
1) There is a reason why tech VC is concentrated in the US - our laws don't punish the greedy 0.1% who put cash in high-risk startups. The rest of the Western world is way behind us due to tons of crazy legal restrictions on VC.
2) Companies like Google may be founded and headquartered in the US, but they are really global companies with workers, offices, servers, and taxable incomes everywhere around the world.
You forget that this was the time before effective delivery vehicles were available - all you have is bombers. The reason why it was so easy to nuke Japan is because their air force was already decimated. I don't think that a bomber carrying a nuke to, say, Berlin would have a good chance of getting there if you take the hypothetical "Great German Reich from Atlantic to the Urals" scenario, with all the industrial base and resources of Europe and USSR at its disposal. You'd need to send several to get any reasonable chance of getting one through, which is very costly, and even then would probably only work for the first attack, since afterwards they'd just start going after bombers disregarding any losses.
No, the nukes were as much a wunderwaffe toy as German V-2. What won the war was the determination and courage of soldiers on the ground, and the sheer manufacturing capacity that Allies had - US and USSR both. The turning point was really in 1941, when blitzkrieg in Russia failed before taking over Moscow, and Soviets succeeded in fully relocating their industry to the Urals and getting it up and running on full capacity. Germans were good at blitzkrieg, but they simply didn't have the resources for a prolonged meat grinder kind of warfare, and that's what they got into in the USSR.
As far as who contributed most to victory, I think it's a fair assessment that USSR bore the brunt of the war in Europe, and US did the same in the Pacific. Everyone else was kinda tagging along - yes, even Brits. It's all really obvious when you look at losses and inflicted casualties. 5 out of 6 Axis soldiers killed in Europe died on the Eastern front, and this also represents about 2/3 of total Axis casualties everywhere. Most of the remaining 1/3 are Japanese soldiers dead from American action.
As far as lend lease goes, it was certainly a noticeable aid to the USSR, esp, in 1941-42, but it is unlikely to have been decisive - it didn't play much role in stopping the Germans at Moscow in 1941. Without it, it would probably have taken an extra year or so for Soviets to build up enough to be ready to go on the offensive, so Kursk (or equivalent) would have been somewhere in mid-to-late 1944, with the corresponding cost increase in human lives. So I think that USSR is by all rights entitled to a claim of being the country that defeated Germany in WW2 even with lend lease in the picture, much as US can claim victory over Japan.
Legislation for parliamentary members from the American colonies had already been passed before the American Revolution. Britain's parliament was supposed to offer parliamentary representation to anyone that was being taxed. Taxing the American colonists without representing them violated the guaranteed 'Rights of Englishmen'. Parliament had been trying to fix this since the puritan days of 1640. The governor of Massachusetts had reported in his journal ("Journal of John Winthrop") that he had been asked by Parliament to send representatives to England as either lobbyists or members but he had refused for he didn't want Massachusetts to become tax-liable.
This went on till just before the revolutionary war. People like John Grenville, Ben Franklin, Thomas Crowley, John Adams, and others all debated and wrote papers discussing parliamentary seats in London or federal representation with the empire that would have legal rights to tax the American colonies. However, there was no assembly or request sent to Westminster by the colonial powers.
During the debate for the Stamp Act, (which stated published written paper such as legal documents, and commercial paper like magazines and newspapers, had to be printed on specified stamped paper from England), several delegates from the colonies attended the sessions in New York, but not as members of Parliament. William Knox reported that these delegates were offered membership, but did not do so for they did not want to give England legal jurisdiction to tax them.
From wikipedia: William Knox submitted that,
whilst [the radical colonists] exclaim against Parliament for taxing them when they are not represented, they candidly declare they will not have representatives [in Parliament] lest they should be taxed...The truth...is that they are determined to get rid of the jurisdiction of Parliament...and they therefore refuse to send members to that assembly lest they should preclude themselves of [the] plea [that Parliament's] legislative acts...are done without their consent; which, it must be confessed, holds equally good against all laws, as against taxes...The colony advocates...tell us, that by refusing to accept our offer of representatives they...mean to avoid giving Parliament a pretence for taxing them.[40]"
The "Conciliatory Resolution" was dated on Feb 27. "The Conciliatory Resolution declared that any colony that contributed to the common defense and provided support for the civil government and the administration of justice (ostensibly against any anti-Crown rebellion) would be relieved of paying taxes or duties except those necessary for the regulation of commerce." (wikipedia)